


ash

by Celestos (Seruspica)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Implied Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 06:01:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6143812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seruspica/pseuds/Celestos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlet based on a request. Set after Atem's 'death'/sealing in the puzzle; continuing a legacy is like keeping a flame burning and refusing to let it go out. Implied (very mild) Priest Seto x Atem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ash

**Author's Note:**

> Based on an anonymous request on Tumblr, my first attempt at this. Previously posted as part of the 'Trinkets, Treasures and Other Miscellanies' collection on FFN.

Seto had never woken up with so much dust on his hands.

He had lain by the oasis for half the day, pondering things any other would have called 'foolish'. Chasing away the attendants, he'd fled for some solitude under the shade and the sun, with only the sun-god to look down on him, to be his companion.

He had stared into the water and then further out, into the expanses of sand. Golden, pale brown, the colours of skin and pale fruit; the grains had shifted and given him comfort as his fingers had drawn themselves through it.

It was strange, he thought, that something like sand could be so serene. Sand was steadfast, eternal, never disappearing - yet soft, so soft, so reminding.

He recalled the feeling of something else in his hands, something warmer, the same tone as his skin, both kissed by the gold of the sun. A hand had taken another, once.

He found himself thinking of pomegranate-red eyes.

It was a thing of the past.

What he'd held in his hands had been the dust of what was long gone, but the sand was eternal, and as it seeped through his fingers, he'd thought of the bitterness of ash; that of a fight lost and of a holy flame that had burst out brightly before fading away.

Like thin, light linen, he felt it slink away, back to the ground from whence it had come.

There was a faint smell of smoke in the air.

Gone was the past, like that ash, like those times. There would forever be sand, no matter how many times the floods of the Nile came and went; season by season, the sands would go on forever. The desert was their land; their place, the thing that embodied their stable conditions. His people, their people, were a steadfast kind, shifting with the winds like the sand, and yet eternally there.

_We will continue your legacy, just like I promised. I'll continue it for you; and when we meet again, I promise, I will have died knowing that I did my best, and that I did it for you._

The dust blew onward, free from his fingers. A faint breeze rippled the water in front of him, his horse braying for him.

Seto knew it was no use staying. He knew he was needed to rebuild their land, stronger than it had been, out from the ashes and dust. They had to conquer the sands, to bring back the glory of dreams; to carry on with the wish of the one who had died so that their kingdom would live once again.

He had a duty; he had to make him proud. The ashes of battle would be blown away, with time, by the wind, but the fire within his chest would not be extinguished. His resolve would go on.

Love's ash would be a noble bird, and fly on beyond, just like his foolish heart had once hoped to fly.


End file.
